Next year...

It has been a gorgeous, albeit dry fall here this year...last year we had an early snow in October, with a blizzard at the end of the month...praying for the snow to hold off a bit longer this year!

The garden is still producing a little bit...a trickle of beans, a cuke every few days and a few more beets to be pulled...oh, and the soybeans are almost ready!! Next year, I want to plant more of those, earlier! But the silly garden still wants to make more food...the beans and cukes are flowering and some parsley, which was covered over by bean plants that I pulled out, look like they want to give it a try.

We ended up with 20 or so of the "Crown of Thorn" gourds and six of the "Dipper Gourds". Next year I want to plant these two big climbers around a teepee frame for the kiddos...should make a nice, cool place to play on hot summer days!



The acorn squash did okay...we got four or five of those, and the butternut squash...well they suffered from uneven watering, so we only got two of those. I think next year I will relocate the box and try and be more regular in my watering ;-)

Are you planting a fall garden? I want to, but it seems from what I have read, that most people in zone 5 who do a fall garden start seeds in July and plant late August...with my back and school and canning and, well Life, that did not happen, so we will try some lettuce, spinach and kale and see what happens, and plan better for next year. I need to get a cover made for one end of the garden to keep the snow off the plants...hmmmm, where IS that honey-do list?

Today, I put up 8 pints of plum jam - YUM! I had been hoping someone would say they had extra plums, and don't you know, today I got a bag full!! Thanks Ang!!

Overall, I have been pretty happy with my Square Foot Garden. It was a good trial run. Now I know NOT to plant pole beans around corn if you want to actually get corn off the plants. I also discovered that nine bush bean plants will completely take over three squares instead of the one square that they were supposed to inhabit! And speaking of pole beans, no one told me I needed light poles for them to climb! The crazy things climbed up anything they could find, and when there was nothing there, they bent over and then climbed back up AGAIN!



Next year, I plan to start my cukes inside to give them a jump start on the short growing season we have here. I also plan to get beets, kale, lettuces, spinach, chard and sweet peas into an early garden...now I just need to figure out who will be willing to come and water the seedlings while we are in GA, relaxing on the beach, watching the waves crash on the shore at Cumberland Island....I will be willing to pay in veggies later - any takers?

A friend of mine is having a baby early in the am, so her two eldest are sleeping over tonight. I just heard the six-year-old boys upstairs talking...

E: I want to be a missionary when I grow up.

M: What's that?

E: It's kind of like a pastor, but you get to fly in an airplane.

M: Oh, cool!

E: You have to do two years military service.

M: What's that?

E: You have to fight. With a sword. {ching, ching}

M: COOL! I wanna do that too!

BOYS! Anything to do with a sword, airplanes and fighting MUST be cool, eh?

Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, my mom and I are canning up a storm: 10 pints honey-peach jam & 9 quarts of peach halves...mmmm - best of all, I picked the peaches from our tree!! On tap for tomorrow, picking elderberries and making elderberry jam - mmmm! Pictures to follow...

The Garden

Did you grow up with a garden in your life? I did. It was a huge rectangle, full of the food that fed us all summer, fall and winter. It was also full of itchy plants which I had to wade through ~ carefully, oh so carefully ~ so as to get them to surrender their bounty to my unwilling hands. Our whole family helped with harvesting, though planting and tending the garden was my Dad's domain. In fact, we were never allowed in the garden, unless we were there to harvest. Which is why this picture means so much to me.



A few years ago, before my Dad got the tiller out to go over the garden for the first time before spring planting, my sister and her kids were there at my parent's house. I don't know how it happened, but suddenly, my sister was racing with wild abandon through our Dad's garden - and guess what? She didn't get in trouble!

And then there was the canning. No way my mom could can all of that food for the six of us without help, and since I was the oldest, it fell to me to help. Not only did we can what my Dad grew in the garden, but whatever else my mom could get her hands on that could withstand heat and pressure. I remember stopping on the side of the road, more than once, because my mom saw berries, plums, peaches or something that she could use to feed her growing family.

I remember the hot, steamy kitchen, the ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead and the old yellow pressure cooker with the paint peeling off the outside. Never did trust that thing, but it never did blow up...my mom was a master at making it sing...and then out of the dark depths would come glistening glass jars, full of wonderful goodness, and I had helped it happen - it was an amazing feeling!

After cooling under towels on the kitchen table, we carried the jars to the basement and stacked them on the pantry shelves by the back door. There is something so satisfying and comforting to go out a door on a regular basis and as you pass by to see row upon row of glass jars, full of yellow peaches, green beans, purple jams and strawberry jelly...just to name a few!

Fast forward 25 or 30 years and now I live in the great wild west, with a yard half the size of my parent's, with three kids under eight, and find myself home for the summer for the first time since I quit my full time job! So, do you know what that means?!?! It's Garden Time!

See, when I was a kid, it was not so fun to harvest beans, tomatoes, and the like. I did it because I had to, but somehow, the beauty of the early morning rendezvous, the dew on the leaves, the bees buzzing lazily about their work...somehow, it got under my skin. I am hoping to share that with my children.

I read years ago about Square Foot Gardening, and was intrigued with the idea. Finally, finally, we are going to have our own garden! Seeds have been purchased, dirt has been dug, and tomorrow we have a trip to the lumber store planned so that we can pick up the boards for our raised beds. We are in the planning and building stages right now, so stay tuned for updates on our garden and canning experiences - it should be a blast!



I am a visual person, so I have made a grid of our garden, so I can decide where to plant what. This is not the final arrangement...just a cool tool to help me figure out what plant should go where, and whom it should live next to. This is either going to be really fun, or a total disaster! Either way, we get to play in the dirt, so it is a win-win situation!

Some of the seeds we started: